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AUCLA 102 Greek and Roman Mythology
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The Nature of Myth
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Mythos
• Archaic Greek: a story, speech, utterance.
– Essentially declarative in nature
• Classical Greek: An unsubstantiated claim
– Mythographos
– Logographos
– Logopoios
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Logos
– An argument – A statement or story based on comparative
evaluation or collection of data – The result of a process – A study
• Bio-logy, Socio-logy, mytho-logy
• Powell: – logos is defined by authorship, it has a known
origin, – mythos is anonymous, it exists in a social milieu
undefined by its origin
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Narrative
• Both mythos and logos are types of narrative
• Narrative
– the structured transmission of a story:
– Sequence of events, plot
– Characterization
• Protagonist vs. Antagonist
– Development and resolution of a crisis
– The medium is the message?
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Tradition
• Orally transmitted through bards:
• Aiodos
– Ode
• Mythode
• Rhapsode
• Stories are handed down generation to generation essentially intact…
• But they are subject to change
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Modern Definitions
• “…Myth is defined as a complex of traditional tales in which significant human situations are united in fantastic combinations to form a polyvalent semiotic system which is used in multifarious ways to illuminate reality…” (Burkert 1985: 120).
• “A traditional story with collective importance” (Powell, 2009: 2)
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Religion
• Religion – An institutionalized system of rituals.
– An institution is a “system of ideas whose object is to explain the world” (Durkheim, 1965: 476).
• Spiritualism – A belief in forces that exist outside of space and
time but that can act within those domains
• Myth is “a convenient paradigm to bridge the spiritual to the actual” (Powell, 2009: 5)
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Types of Myth
• Powell: Morford et al (4):
• ‘Divine Myth’ ‘Myth Proper’
– Primary actors divine Stories about the gods
• Legend Saga
– Primary actors heroes “roots in historical fact”
• Folktale
– Ordinary People “primarily to entertain”
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Truth and Falsehood
• Divine Time
• Poetry was preferable to history in the ancient imagination because it dealt with, revealed, the universal (Finley, 1965: 283)
• The ‘truth’ about the past did not matter. “Acceptance and belief where what counted” (Finley, 1965: 299).
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Modern Theories
• Myths… “describe patterns of behaviour that serve as models for members of a society especially in times of crisis” (Powell, 2009: 3).
• “Myth provides us with absolutes in the place of ephemeral values and with a comforting perception of the world that is necessary to make the insecurity and terror of existence bearable” (Morford et al., 5 citing Leszek Kolakowski, 1989: The Presence of Myth)
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Culture and Society
• Archetypes: – Behavioral patterns that reflect a collective
unconscious (Jung in Morford et al)
– “A society can neither create itself nor recreate itself without at the same time creating an ideal” (Durkheim, 1965: 470).
– “…from the moment when it is recognized that above the individual there is society, and that this is not a nominal being created by reason, but a system of active forces, a new manner of explaining men becomes possible” (Durkheim, 1965: 495).
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Culture and Belief
• “Religion is sociologically interesting not because, as vulgar positivism would have it, it describes the social order...but because... it shapes it” (Geertz, 1973:119).
• “The social function of myth is to bind together social groups as wholes or, in other words, to establish a social consensus.” (Halpern, 1961: 137)
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Greekness
• Greek: – Is a cultural definition
– Language
– Custom
– Religious practices
– Direct connection to the myth cycle • The only reason to preserve community memory beyond
the stories of three or four generations is for the explanation or justification of religious and socio-political orders. Oral tradition is a tool for the maintenance of the status quo (Finley, 1965: 297-8).
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Conclusions?
• If myth is a cultural charter, is divine participation necessary?
• Myth is any communally ratified narrative that serves to define or legitimate membership in the community, and, therefore, is not and must not be subject to proofs. (just my thoughts…)
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Ancient Roots
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Ubaid and Samarran
• 6000 BC
• Lower Tigris Euphrates valleys
– Spread through Fertile Crescent
• Pictographic writing
• Sophisticated irrigation
• Mostly Semitic Languages
• Mother goddess fertility images
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Sumer
Arrived from Asia ca 3900 – 3500
Unique language resembles Turkic
– Brought (?) Copper tech.
– Applied to irrigation
– Kish or Uruk earliest city
– Legend of the Flood
– Legends of divine parentage
– Legends of humble origins
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Semitic Revival
• Akkadian
– 2340 – ca. 2000 BC
• Babylon
– 2000 - 1600
• Assyria
– ca. 1600 – 612 BC
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Pantheon
• Sumerian Babylonian Role
• An Anu Sky
• Inanna Ishtar sex and war
• Enlil Enlil/Marduk Storm
• Enki Ea Water
• Utu Shamash Sun
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Indo-Europeans
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Indo-European
• Defined by language
• The principle the of Indo-European relationship with the gods is “do ut des” (Burkert, 1985: 25).
• A patriarchal, warrior culture.
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Geographic Context
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Geography
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Mycenaean Greece
• Proto-Greek, Indo-Europeans – Fully developed by 1600
– Warrior (charioteer) elite
– Mycenae, Pylos, Sparta, Athens
– Complete collapse by 1000 BC
• Homeric Epics – Age of Heroes
– Iliad
– Odyssey
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Chariots of the Gods
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Sources for Greek Myth
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Literary: Epic Poetry
• Epic Poetry:
• Homer (ca. 850 BC)
– Iliad; Odyssey; Homeric Hymns
• Hesiod (ca. 750 BC)
– Works and Days; Theogony
• Ovid (ca. 50BC)
– Metamorphoses
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Literary: Playwrights
• Aeschylus (525 – 456 BC) – Prometheus Bound
– Seven Against Thebes
• Euripides (484 -407 BC) – Alcestis
– Medea
• Sophocles – Oedipus Tyrannus
– Antigone
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Literary: Prose Literature
• Herodotus
– The Histories
• Plato
– Socratic Dialogues
• Diodorus
– Bibliotheca
• Plutarch
– Biographies
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Pottery and Painting
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Sculpture